Revenue Minister warns tahsildars of action if they fail to dispose of cases within 90 days

Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda on Monday threatened to initiate action against those tahsildars who fail to dispose of cases that come to their courts within 90 days.

“On an average, cases used to be disposed of in 212 days. This has been reduced to an average of 82 days in the last two years. However, this process has slackened recently, which is not acceptable,” the Minister said, while addressing a virtual meeting of tahsildars.

He said that to bring convenience to the public, cases had been asked to be disposed of quickly. “Though some tahsildars were efficient, some are being irresponsible. This is bringing a bad name to the government and people are forced to visit tahsildars’ offices every day. Any case being kept for over 90 days will attract disciplinary action,” the Minister said.

Regarding the podi, Mr. Gowda expressed displeasure over the podi work not gaining pace despite the launch of a State-wide campaign.

“Though the State government has approved grant of land to poor farmers decades ago, the podi work could not be done, leaving lakhs of farmers in distress. In Dakshina Kannada and Tumakuru, podi work has seen progress, which, however, is not the case with other districts,” he observed.

Warning errant tahsildars, who have ignored work on the digitisation of land records, with threat of notices, the Minister said that against a target of scanning 6,000 pages a day, some offices were not even scanning 2,000 pages despite the government providing scanners, computers, and data entry operators.

“In strong rooms in tahsildars’ offices across Karnataka, it is estimated that about 100 crore pages of land records are stacked. Of these, 37.6 crore pages have been scanned. About 6.32 lakh pages have been uploaded in the public domain after ascertaining the veracity of land records.”

He directed officials to complete the digitisation process by the end of the year.

Pointing out that 52 lakh land holdings are still in the name of deceased farmers, the Minister said that in about 3.35 lakh cases, pouti khatha has been executed in favour of the heirs.

Mr. Gowda said: “However, we are not happy with the progress. The Centre has issued direction to stop PM Kisan, drip irrigation, and vehicle subsidy to those land holdings that are still in the name of the deceased. Farmers will be affected.”